The Best American Essays of 2013

When I think of the word "essay," I think of a piece of factual writing, which could be about anything from the post-Soviet economy of Uzbekistan to the mating rituals of Hottentots. But according to the folks at the Best American series, especially guest editor Cheryl Strayed, an essay is a personal reminiscence. In essence, what we have here is the Best American Memoirs of 2013.

Many of these essays follow the same template: they link a personal memory to a concrete set of facts. The best of these are John Jeremiah Sullivan's "Ghost Estates," which ties together his search for his Irish roots with the burst of the Irish housing boom and the work of John Millington Synge. Another is the extraordinary "The Book of Knowledge," by Steven Harvey, who links the children's encyclopedia of the title to his faint memory of his mother, who killed herself when he was 12. Yet another example of this tactic is "When They Let Them Bleed," by Tod Goldberg, who recounts his childhood adversities while remembering the death in the ring of boxer Duk Koo Kim at the hands of Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini.

Death is, as one might expect, a big topic here. There are also essays by Vanessa Veselka, on girls murdered while hitchhiking ("Highway of Lost Girls") and Michelle Mirsky's "Epilogue: Deadkidistan," dealing with the death of her child. There's also "Field Notes on Hair," Vicki Weiqui Yang's essay about losing her hair during chemo treatment for a brain tumor.

I appreciated the funnier essays. The lead off one is "Free Rent at the Totalitarian Hotel," by Poe Ballantine, on the weird comings and goings at a rooming house. He recalls that his landlady's dead husband was "a big-game hunter, he had labeled all his Cryovacked packages in permanent black marker: ELK, ELEPHANT, BLACK BEAR, ZEBRA, GAZELLE. So far I had been reluctant to try any of it for fear that Mrs. Vollstanger had actually killed, dressed, and Cryovacked her husband."

Another funny one, although also scary, is Matthew Vollmer's "Keeper of the Flame." Vollmer's father, a dentist, takes him to visit one of his patients, who keeps one of the largest collections of Nazi memorabilia in an underground vault. Another funny and scary one, and my favorite in the whole collection, is "What Happens in Hell," by Charles Baxter. He tells the story of how he had a driver while in San Francisco, a Pakistani man who tells him all about Hell. Later, the driver will fall asleep at the wheel, and Baxter recounts the harrowing accident he gets into. "But all I could think of then and now was, That expert on Hell almost got me killed."

Other highlights are "The Art of Being Born," by Marcia Aldrich, a memoir of a pregnancy, told to her newborn child. This kind of thing usually is fodder for women's magazines, but it's much better than that, and has a rollicking tone: "I woke up late, having spent the night beached on the couch in the living room, memorizing the distinguishing signs of every rash chronicled in Dr. Spock's baby book, until nodding off around six. The book lay open to cradle cap, flaking patches of skin on the tops of newborn heads, which might be 'cracked, greasy, or even weeping.'"

Not every essay here grabbed me. Dagoberto Gil's "A Little Bit of Fun Before He Died," about a garrulous writing teacher colleague, wasn't all that well focused, and I think the subject wasn't as interesting as Gil thinks he was. And frankly, I have no idea what was going on in J.D. Daniels' "Letter from Majorca."

I'll finish with Zadie Smith's "Some Notes on Attunement," how a black woman became a huge fan of Joni Mitchell: "I can't listen to Joni Mitchell in a room with other people, or on an an iPod, walking the streets. Too risky. I can never guarantee that I'm going to be able to get through the song without being made transparent--to anybody and everything, to the whole world. A mortifying sense of porousness." The best of these essays do exhibit a mortifying sense of porousness, perhaps for the author, but enrichment for us.

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